He had secret loves all over town, the kind of curly-haired big-bodied girls who wouldn't have said boo to a loser like him but about whom he could not stop dreaming.

“I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do…”

“Sure, I liked girls but I was always too terrified to speak to them unless we w…”

“I would have waited until we got back to the States, waited like paja de arroz,…”

“Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the jou…”